14 | June | 2018 | The Aroma of Books

Last fall, Bibliobeth started a new book tag, Shelfie by Shelfie. You can see her original post here (and her most recent Shelfie here) – and I’ve nabbed her image as well. :-D The concept is that you take a picture of a bookshelf, and then answer ten questions about the books on it. I have about a billion bookshelves, so I thought that I would give it a go!

Well, it’s been quite a while since I have posted a shelfie – I went through a pretty long spell of having the blogging blues and have been struggling just to somewhat stay on top of book reviews! But I am mostly caught up now and thought I would take a minute to present the latest Shelfie installment!!

Shelf 1 – excuse the piles of random stuff… remodeling never ends in this house! :-D

Currently, I am posting about Shelf #1, and have already looked at the top to shelves – 1A and 1B. Today we’re on to Shelf 1C!!

1 – Is there any reason for this shelf being organized the way it is, or is it purely random?

My fiction is somewhat organized by author’s last name, but as you can see, these aren’t really linear shelves – my husband custom-built these shelves for me (marry a man who builds shelves, ladies!), purposely creating little cubbies and odd-shaped shelves so that they could hold both books and knickknacks. So sometimes instead of going in strict author-order, I put in the books that fit… and that’s what’s happening here. These are taller books, mostly by Marguerite Henry… because the shelf the rest of her books are on is a lot shorter!!!

2 – Tell us a story about one of the books on this shelf that is special to you; i.e. how you got it, a memory associated with it, etc.

As a girl, I loved horses and dogs and cows (although not a lot of cow books out there), and C.W. Anderson was one of my heroes. (Actually, I named my cat after him – Clarence.) I checked Twenty Gallant Horses out of the library ALL THE TIME. I was completely enraptured by the stories of these thoroughbreds, and read them time and again. Years later, I was at the library book sale… and the EXACT copy I had read as a child was in the discard pile! I snatched it up for a quarter! Honestly, it was somewhat bittersweet. While I was pretty thrilled to get a childhood favorite for my permanent collection, it’s sad to me that this book isn’t in the library for some other young girl to love!

3 – Which book from this shelf would you ditch if you were forced to and why?

Oh gee, I guess Black Gold. While I do love that book – especially the illustrations – it’s such a sad story!!

4 – Which book from this shelf would you save in an emergency and why?

Hmm. I’m not really sure any of these are necessarily emergency worthy, but I think I would choose Misty of Chincoteague. I reread it recently and was surprised that I enjoyed it even more as an adult than I did as a child.

5 – Which book has been on this shelf for the longest time?

Probably either Misty or Justin Morgan Had a Horse. Both of those I’ve owned since I was probably around 10 – long enough ago that it was before I started writing my name and the date on the flyleaf! I collected horse books for a long time, and these were some of my earliest library additions.

6 – Which book is the newest addition to this shelf?

These are honestly all kind of oldies. Wagging Tails is probably the most recent purchase, though – I bought it a few years ago at an antique shop.

7 – Which book on this shelf are you most excited to read (or reread if this is a favorite shelf)?

These are all old favorites, but Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley is actually on my #20BooksofSummer list, so hopefully I’ll be getting to that one before September!!

8 – If there is an object on this shelf apart from books, tell us the story behind it.

I probably should have turned around the frisbee-catching cow before taking the picture so you could see her better. :-D This is one of my favorite knickknacks – my dad gave it to me a long time ago. The title of the piece is “Daisy’s Dream” and it makes me grin every time I look at it.

9 – What does this shelf tell us about you as a reader?

That I had a definitely addiction to horse books as a child!!

10 – Choose other bloggers to tag or choose a free question you make up yourself.

I highly encourage everyone to give this lil Q&A a whirl, as it is great fun!

For a free question,

Tell more about the illustrators of the books on this shelf.

I just really feel like I need to at least mention the amazing artwork of Wesley Dennis, who illustrated the majority of the Marguerite Henry books, and C.W. Anderson, who did his own artwork for his books. I love both of them so much, and still snap up any book I find that they’ve illustrated, regardless of whether or not I’m actually interested in the book. Both artists do so much with simple line drawings, although Dennis also did many full-color illustrations as well.

I poured over their artwork as a child and yearned to be able to draw even half as well as either of these artists. I still can only draw stick figures, but at least I have the joy of being able to study their illustrations whenever I want.